Free Stiff by Shane Maloney Page B

Employees for a while.’ This drew a blank. ‘Garbage collectors, street sweepers.’ Merricks’ expression did not change but I knew I might as well have said ‘dung beetles’ or ‘intestinal tapeworms’.
    Agnelli felt the crackle of insolence and quickly stepped back in. ‘There would be no disruption of day-to-day activities at the plant. Murray here could be in and out of there in a couple of hours. Isn’t that right, Murray?’
    Merricks still wasn’t having any of it. ‘Our corporate culture is an open book. But there are always sensitivities at the shop floor level—restrictive work practices, demarcation disputes. I’m sure you are all too familiar with these matters, Murray. Having an outsider go in asking questions, at a time like this, I’m not at all convinced it’s a good idea.’
    I nodded absently. No skin off my nose. The sheer scale of the view out the window was mesmerising. It seemed like the whole sky was in the room with us. Out over the bay thunderheads were marching in from the west in mile-high battalions. I wondered how helpful the plug of overalls would be once that lot broke. Not the sort of problem Mr Lionel Merricks would ever have to deal with. None of his roofs was ever likely to have a pair of soggy King Gees stuffing its inadvertent apertures. Not the gabled mansard one in Lansell Road, Toorak, or the cantilevered art deco one on the cliff top at Portsea or the mossy slate one on the homestead at Macedon.
    ‘It’s entirely your decision, of course, Mr Merricks,’ I said softly, ‘but do keep in mind that I have already discussed this matter with one of the industrial officers at the Trades Hall. You know what the unions can be like. If they were to form the opinion that your company is being obstructive...’
    It was Merricks’ turn to examine the meteorological panorama. Conditions looked more and more unsettled by the moment. Across the room, Agnelli’s eyes had gone wide with caution. The clouds moved closer. The moment continued. Merricks’ attention seemed to linger on a tanker idling in the bay, waiting for a berth.
    ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll instruct our on-site management to co-operate. But I must insist that liaison be directly with me. Your findings are to be communicated directly and confidentially to me, and to me alone. I trust I am understood?’
    There was a knock on the door and the ice queen opened it all the way. Merricks rose, nodded tersely. ‘Understood?’ he squeaked.
    ‘I’m sure Charlene will appreciate your accessibility, Mr Merricks,’ Agnelli cooed, but Merricks had already disappeared.
    I looked at my watch. It was just on eleven-fifteen. Merricks had been in the room precisely five minutes.
    I shook my head. ‘Not a word, Agnelli,’ I said. ‘Not a fucking syllable.’

Coolaroo lay on the furthermost northern edge of the electorate, out where the fringes of the city finally frayed into paddocks of shoulder-high scotch thistle and the rusting hulks of cannibalised car bodies. Any further out and the voters chewed their cuds. I drove there straight from the city, the highway slick with drizzle, wanting only to get it over and done with.
    Half a kilometre past the Ford factory I turned off into an industrial estate of warehouses and small factories. The road narrowed to a single lane of asphalt and I hugged the margins, wary of the lumbering sixteen-wheelers that were the only other traffic. The Renault threw up a slurry of mud and gravel as it went, the suspension feeling its age in the potholes. If I could have afforded anything else I’d have got rid of the shitheap years before. It was the French, not me, who deserved to be punished. I wasn’t the one turning Micronesia into croque monsieur.
    The Pacific Pastoral meatworks was a block long and half as wide, three storeys high, ringed by a chain-mesh fence and fronted by a wide asphalt apron. I pulled into the employees’ carpark opposite and eased into the gap